Chris Sorensen - Exam Ref 70-779 Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Excel

Exam Ref 70-779
Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Excel

Chris Sorensen

Exam Ref 70-779 Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Excel

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Pearson Education, Inc.

Copyright 2018 by Pearson Education

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5093-0804-0
ISBN-10: 1-5093-0804-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943933
1 18

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I dedicate this book to my wife, Joely, my daughter Camryn, and my son Murphy. Their love, support and encouragement had no bounds through what was one of the most challenging projects I have ever worked on.

CHRIS SORENSEN

I would like to thank the first two members of the Iteration Insights team, Jane Wood and Emily Gu, for their enthusiasm and contributions as we worked on this project as a newly formed company. They helped make this book possible as we worked days, nights, and weekends for months to bring it all together. I would also like to thank Trina MacDonald for her encouragement, support, and belief in our team through the process of writing this book. Writing a book of this magnitude would not be possible without the contribution of the editing staff of Daniil Maslyuk, Troy Mott, Rick Kughen, and Christina Rudloff, who sifted through the many versions of our materials to ensure technical and grammatical accuracy. Their insights and contributions were appreciated.

CHRIS SORENSEN , MCSE (Data Management and Analytics) and MCT, is the Founder and President of Iteration Insights Ltd. He is a consultant, architect, educator, and coach who has been working in the Analytics space for nearly 20 years. Over his career, he has provided strategic and architectural advisory services to many clients and most recently he has been involved with leading numerous Power BI and Excel PowerPivot projects. He has evangelized both Excel and Power BI with Microsoft since July 2015. Follow him on both Linkedin and Twitter as @wjdataguy.

The 70-779 exam is designed for both Business Intelligence developers and Business power users that have used Excel for many years to help support Analytics in an organization. The book is an even split between the skills needed to Consume and Transform Data, Model Data, and then Visualize Data.

In the Consume and Transform Data chapter the focus is on the sources that Excel can connect with for data, and then how to transform data using the Power Query Editor. It is important to understand the M language that underlies the Power Query Editor and is generated when performing transform tasks using the GUI.

The chapter on Modeling Data turns the focus to the Excel Data Model to build the necessary relationships that glue the data model together, and the how to optimize it for reporting. Next, we look at how to extend the model and make it easy to consume for users by utilizing DAX, KPIs, and Hierarchies.

When Visualizing data, we spend time considering PivotTables and PivotCharts as the two primary methods in Excel for presenting data. Lastly, you will spend time investigating how to interact with Power BI as an additional means for distributing content to users.

This book covers every major topic area found on the exam, but it does not cover every exam question. Only the Microsoft exam team has access to the exam questions, and Microsoft regularly adds new questions to the exam, making it impossible to cover specific questions. You should consider this book a supplement to your relevant real-world experience and other study materials. If you encounter a topic in this book that you do not feel completely comfortable with, use the Need more review? links youll find in the text to find more information and take the time to research and study the topic. Great information is available on MSDN, TechNet, and in blogs and forums.

This book is organized by the Skills measured list published for the exam. The Skills measured list is available for each exam on the Microsoft Learning website: http://aka.ms/examlist. Each chapter in this book corresponds to a major topic area in the list, and the technical tasks in each topic area determine a chapters organization. If an exam covers six major topic areas, for example, the book will contain six chapters.

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